The cash-strapped football club Vitesse has been put into further dire straits as new transactions have surfaced between current Russian owner Valeriy Oyf and oligarch Roman Abramovich. Due to the interconnectedness between the two Russians, the Ministry of Economic Affairs states that Abramovich has actual control over the Arnhem club, which may therefore fall under sanctions legislation.
Abramovich, a confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was put on the European sanctions list in the spring of 2022. The oligarch’s assets were frozen, including the British football club Chelsea. This led to the club not being allowed to sell players, tickets and merchandise as long as Abramovich was owner. Ultimately, Chelsea was sold, the proceeds parked in a British bank account. The sale required permission from the British government.
That fate – government interference – now also threatens Vitesse, if the club does not quickly find a way to completely sideline the current Russian owner Oyf. It is also uncertain whether Vitesse will receive a professional license for next season as long as ties with Oyf have not been cut.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs had given Vitesse until this Wednesday to respond to the possible sanction violation. But according to a Vitesse spokesperson, “the ball is elsewhere.” He refers to a KNVB investigation into the Russian owner of Vitesse that has not yet been completed. “Until then we have to wait and see. The only thing we can do is cooperate with the investigations.”
Rejected takeover
Vitesse, number 17 in the Eredivisie, has been looking for a way to break away from its Russian owner for about two years. The club management thought they had found it with a sale to the investment company Common Group of the American Coley Parry. But that takeover was recently rejected by the KNVB licensing committee, because the American could not or did not want to demonstrate where the money for the intended takeover came from.
Even if the KNVB had agreed to a takeover by the Common Group, the transaction would probably have encountered legal objections. Because while Vitesse is looking – in vain for the time being – for a party that can and wants to buy the heavily loss-making club, it is becoming increasingly clear about Abramovich’s interrelationship with the current owner, Oyf, and his predecessors.
The existence of the letter from Economic Affairs to Vitesse leaked last week through The Telegraph. The ministry started investigating after revelations of The Guardian with The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and NRC last fall about the financial ties between the oligarch and the owners of the Vitesse. These publications already showed that Abramovich was not just a business friend of the Russians at Vitesse, as the club always claimed, but that they were indirectly financed by the oligarch.
Abramovich considered Vitesse his club, wrote NRC on the basis of Cyprus Confidential, a research project of 65 international media led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and the German research platform Paper Trail Media into leaked documents from various financial service providers from Cyprus.
The ministry then requested relevant information from ING, Vitesse’s house bank. This has further strengthened the image of direct involvement of Abramovich at Vitesse. An ING spokesperson would not say anything further about this, because the bank never responds to matters involving individual customers. The bank also makes no statements about “contacts with authorities”. “Within the laws and regulations, we will of course cooperate with investigations and information requests from authorities.”
Research by NRC now shows that the ministry bases its conclusion on, among other things, a complicated financial transaction from 2018, the year that Oyf took over Vitesse from compatriot Alexander Chigirinski. A payment has also surfaced from an Oyf company to an Abramovich company, which appears to relate to the takeover of Vitesse.
Residential towers in Moscow
In the transaction from October 2018, Abramovich sells to Oyf a bunch of shares in a company that co-owns Chigirinski’s real estate company for a pittance. That company develops residential towers in Moscow, among other things. In this way, the current and former owners of Vitesse, Oyf and Chigirinski, and Abramovich come together on a business basis.
The strongest indication of Abramovich’s involvement with Vitesse emerges from an earlier payment from 2018. Under the foreign owners, Vitesse then started to make great efforts to realize its ambitions. For example, Chigirinski lends millions to the club every year during the period that he is owner of Vitesse. Vitesse’s debt to the Russian has risen to over 136 million when Chigirinksi decides to sell the club to Oyf in May 2018. He also takes over Vitesse’s debt to Chigirinski, according to secret contracts.
But instead of paying Chigirinski for this, Oyf transferred $10 million to an Abramovich letterbox company in June 2018. As if he was the one who actually had the claim on Vitesse, and not Chigirinski.
To date, Abramovich’s influence has been consistently denied by those involved. An Oyf lawyer has now stated in a response that he is cooperating with the investigation by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. He also says that Abramovich has no form of “control” or “involvement” “in or over” Vitesse and that the oligarch was in no way involved in processes surrounding the sale of shares in the football club. Oyf does not respond to the specific financial transactions that the ministry is investigating.
A lawyer for Abramovich also says that the oligarch has never had any “influence or control” over Vitesse. That remains the club’s view for the time being, says a spokesperson. “Money flows do not equal direct influence.”